one you, and to deliver
myself, if necessary, into the hands of the proper French authorities
in expiation of my misguided zeal."

The Countess was looking at him now; he fumbled with the paper boat,
gave it an unconscious twist, and produced a tiny paper box.

"The cause," he said, gently, "to which I have devoted my life must
not suffer through the mistake of a fanatic; for in the cause of
universal brotherhood I am, perhaps, a fanatic, and to aid that cause
I have gravely compromised myself. I came here to expiate that folly
and to throw myself upon your mercy, madame."

"I do not exactly understand," said I, "how you can expiate a crime
here."

"I can at least make restitution," he said, turning the paper box
over and over between his flat fingers.

"Have you brought me the diamonds which belong to the state?" I
inquired, amused.

"Yes," he said, and to my astonishment he drew a small leather pouch
from his pocket and laid it on my blanket-covered knees. "How many
diamonds were there?" he asked.

"One hundred and three," I replied, incredulously, and opened the
leather pouch. Inside was a bag of chamois-skin. This I stretched wide
and emptied.

Scores of little balls of tissue-paper rolled out on the blanket over
my knees; I opened one; it contained a diamond; I opened another,
another, and another; diamonds lay blazing on my blanket, a whole
handful, glittering in undimmed splendor.

"Count them," murmured Buckhurst, fashioning the paper box into a
fly-trap with a lid.

With a quick movement I swept them into my hands, then one by one
dropped the stones while I counted aloud one hundred and two diamonds.
The one hundred and third jewel was, of course, safely in Paris.

When I had a second time finished the enumeration I leaned back in my
chair, utterly at a loss to account for this man or for what he had
done. As far as I could see there was no logic in it, nothing
demonstrated, nothing proven. To me--and I am not either suspicious or
obstinate by nature--Buckhurst was still an unrepentant thief and a
dangerous one.

I could see in him absolutely nothing of the fanatic, of the generous,
feather-headed devotee, nothing of the hasty disciple or the impulsive
martyr. In my eyes he continued to be the passionless master-criminal,
the cold, slow-eyed source of hidden evil, the designer of an
intricate and viewless intrigue against the state.

His head remained bent over the paper toy in his hands. Was